


reason and love keep little company together nowadays

by myladybrienne



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Jaime POV, Pre-Canon, Sacrifice, Sword Fighting, book canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-04
Updated: 2019-07-04
Packaged: 2020-06-09 13:54:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19477261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myladybrienne/pseuds/myladybrienne





	reason and love keep little company together nowadays

_Oathkeeper_ weighed heavily in her hand and set her stance off-kilter as she stood in front of him. Brienne’s armour was scraped and scratched. Over it, she wore a grey woollen cloak that didn’t suit her at all. It suited her far better than the grievous expression she wore, eyes fixed upon the dead grass.

 _She doesn’t want to do this._ Brienne had no life left in her now, eyes weary where purpose had so long abated the need for rest. Jaime could see that behind the oath she had sworn, she had no desire at all for such a duel. For six long days, she had worn her guilt as a shield, ready to shun his advances with self-pitying blows. Jaime had thought she might find some excuse to make another do the deed; in the end, honour compelled her, weak as it seemed to be in its hold.

He drew Widow’s Wail from its scabbard and dipped his head to his opponent. “Kingslayer,” said Harwin, onlooking.

In the company of the enemy, one must learn to bite one’s tongue, and with more than a dozen swords watching, it was no time to be brave. “Might we get things underway?”

“Are you so eager to die that you race towards your execution?” Harwin said. “Lady Stoneheart will want to be here to watch you die, you can wait a while.”

 _Must they all spectate?_ “As you wish.”   
  
Brienne ran her thumb across the rubies of her sword’s hilt, back and forth, until he couldn’t watch it anymore. Lady Stoneheart approached, silent as a ghost might be, and croaked out a call of commencement to the pair.

As he swiftly closed the space between them, he observed her slowness, brushing her sword against his almost gently. Steel met steel with a screeching, jaw-clenching scrape. Brienne wasn’t even trying, and he knew it. “Come on, wench.”

 _Kill me_.

There was fire in her eyes at the mere mention of the word, the longsword in her hands driving at him. Jaime met each blow with a careful precision. The pair of them danced around the ground they had been given and he remembered what it felt like the first time. _I’m stronger now than I was then, even without my sword hand._ All the practice had left him confident; this was the closest to a fair fight they would ever get… _if only she were trying._

Hard, sharp, quick, she came down upon him with the might of the seven behind her blade. Parry, swing, slash, parry, tiring him with each blow until he was panting for air. Sweat threatened his grasp and he was clutching at the sword for fear he might drop it. Step, strike, back, and back, thrusting against her unwavering strength. 

“Finish this,” Harwin shouted but the words were not his own. “Finish him.”

Brienne drew a steady breath, her cheeks flush with battle blood.

He spun his blade daintily through the air and swung at her again, sloppy in his strike. 

It was impossible to say how long they fought, only until his limbs burned and his heart pounded. He pressed against her again and again; he felt the hopelessness weighing down his blade and yet he fought anyway. When she managed to nick his jaw with a clumsy swipe, her guilt left her wide open and he shoved her back with the flat of her blade. Her sword chimed against his pauldron as her feet fell out from under her on a bit of uneven ground.

Her grunt was enough to tell him that he’d won. He straddled her waist and brought Widow’s Wail to her throat, struggling to handle the great length of it at such short range. Brienne squirmed underneath him desperately and thrashing at his armoured midriff with her sword though her blows were weak as a child’s at such an impossible angle.

“Yield,” he commanded.

She tried to get her weight out from under him, but he was stronger now, Brienne had been relying on his malnourished frame to fail him, but she had kept him well fed in his imprisonment.

“Yield!”

There was something in her eyes akin to shame. _I have beaten her, and she will hate me for it until my last breath._ His blade pressed close against her sharp, angular jaw and she didn’t’ even flinch when he broke the skin.

The rattling croak of Lady Stoneheart, followed by the empty words of Harwin by her side: “She will not yield. If she yields, she will die.”

Jaime’s eyes flicked down to Brienne. She was bleeding a little and beads of sweat had formed at her hairline, her chest plate digging into her pale skin, her cheeks red. _She has been lying to me._ Jaime tightened his jaw and dragged himself to his feet. A dozen swords shrieked against their scabbards, ready for a slaughter. _These are not honourable men._ “I will not kill her, not for my own life. If anyone must die for my crimes, it shall be me.”

The onlookers all seemed to want the pair of them dead and he found himself longing for his sister’s cunning mind. Such conniving would not be lost on her, he was certain. Brienne was stood beside him now, hand bound tightly around his golden adornment and the way her fingers went red, then white with the strength of her grasp, he was glad it wasn’t a _real_ wrist.

“This is an execution, not a trial,” Harwin sneered and his tone suggested that they both ought to have known that. _Either I will die, or both of us._

These were not knights, they were not brave or just, they were vengeful. The worst warriors that the Seven Kingdoms might ever produce, and all in the service of a woman kept walking by her desire to put a sword betwixt his ribs.

Brienne found her voice. “I won’t kill him. He _deserves_ a trial, and if that was one, he has won. He does not deserve to die.” 

The screeching words escaped her mouth like bats from a cave, all over the place and impossible for him to catch. Jaime wondered if it didn’t pain her terribly to press her flayed skin back against her rotting flesh every time, she uttered a word. She bore it gracefully, somehow.

“You were given a choice. The sword or the noose. You _chose_ the sword. You _swore_ an oath, or has your honour been robbed from you with your maidenhead? Kill _him,_ or you’ll watch him scream before you meet your end.”  
  
Oathkeeper had torn through the papery skin of her throat before she had a moment to draw breath. She collapsed against the blade and her half-rotten flesh started to tear under the weight of him. Brienne shucked her away and dropped her blade to the floor.

There were twenty armed men surrounding them. Jaime swallowed down his worries and saved them for a more appropriate time, instead bracing himself. Brienne stumbled back and almost fell against his readied blade. The stench of death filled the air more quickly than he’d ever known it to. Lady Stoneheart was collapsed on the floor, and Brienne’s eyes were fixed on her.

 _We must go._ An audience became a company in a blink. The Brotherhood Without Banners looked akin to a pack of starving beasts. They were ready to kill the both of them.

Jaime caught a flash of movement to his right and moved, sword first, to kill the man who dared approach. He was the first of seventeen. Brienne took only four. _She’s moving, that’s enough._ On the ground laid the last of the dead men, _Ser Hyle Hunt._

There was little time to think but all his mind could conjure was confusion. _Why kill for_ _me,_ _or was I merely an opportunity?_ There was too much good in her, too much innocence to survive long in this world, and yet she remained. Jaime feared for her in all her unwavering dedication to what she _believed_ was good and was bad.

At the top of a hill, without a score of bodies surrounding them, Brienne stumbled, and Jaime caught her for fear she might fall and never get up again. “I _killed_ her.”   
  
The young warrior maid looked at him with wanton terror and her freckles were stark against the paleness that befell her skin.

“She was going to kill you. Your oath was to die _for_ her, not at her hand. That wasn’t Catelyn Stark, you _know_ that.”   
  
Lady Stoneheart was a stranger to them all. She was not beloved by any, even Brienne had wavered in her loyalty for the first time in her life. The body on the ground seemed barely human, there was not blood seeping from the fatal wound, nor was there a sense of life ebbing from her where it hadn’t been in years. Lady Catelyn was long dead.   
  
“I killed the woman I swore to protect,” Brienne whispered emptily as she stepped beyond his reach. Her voice sounded as though she might break at any moment. “She asked me to kill the man who all but killed her son and I _failed_ her…Ser Jaime, what kind of a swordsman am I? What kind of _person?_ ”

“I know what it is to be without honour, and you are certainly not that.” 

The frown that came across her face was almost sweet. Jaime saw in her eyes the instinct to defend him and it flattered him, but she was fragile, and he wouldn’t tease her even if the words had come to mind. 

Every man who was there to bear witness to her act was dead, but there was a league of men loyal to _Mother Merciless_ that would have their heads if they knew. Beric Dondarrion would take leadership, that was without doubt, but there would be those of the North eager to die earning vengeance for their lady. A few hundred men, all ready to die fighting against a one-armed man and a woman with a broken spirit.

“Pod,” she exclaimed as though remembering. “He’s in the cells. I have to find him. 

And she was Brienne again, so suddenly it seemed a miracle. Jaime looked at her and she was all blood and dirt and sorrow but that was her. _A purpose,_ he thought, and he knew that was all she had been longing for.

She would die in service of one idea or another, but for now, she needed to live, for the sweet-tempered squire she had snatched away. _She’ll live for him, for now._  
  


  
  
  



End file.
